I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.
Infrastructure Specialis at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Real User
Top 20
Jan 3, 2025
Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges. This is one of the main things organizations need.
After implementation, there are limitations, such as the number of paths, file systems, and replication options. It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises.
I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert. It could be an additional feature and security that can come along with the array. Ultimately, whatever you store, you store it on a storage, and then that gets executed. Any AI-based protection against malware, unusual patterns of data, or some malicious code being stored on the array would make life easy for the administrators.
One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.
System and Network administrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Dec 12, 2023
We are a little bit disappointed about the data deduplication feature. We were promised a deduplication rate of at least 2:1. At the moment, we get 1.8:1, which limits our expectations. We may run out of storage in the foreseeable future. We need better data deduplication. I read that the vendor is working on a better deduplication algorithm. It will be useful for us if it works. We mostly rely on long-term releases. We don't need the most up-to-date features, but we need a reliable environment. It's important for us.
There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features. We would appreciate a built-in transparent failover in the next release to eliminate the need for a separate metro cluster.
In terms of improvement, the dual-controller configuration is effective, but I'm eagerly anticipating the roadmap's promise of introducing multiple controllers, which could significantly boost scalability and resilience.
Vice President of product at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Oct 19, 2023
Given its price, Pure is not the first option. If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure. Customers ask if there is Turkish language support, but Pure Storage doesn't have it. Only partners give support in Turkish, or customers need to speak in English. It would be good if Pure Storage could improve this.
Senior Administrator/IT Systems & Cloud Operations at Etisalat
Real User
Jul 19, 2023
We need to get more information about the performance fine-tuning that we are doing. Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe. It will be much better if Pure FlashArray X NVMe provides these options like other products. The latency issue does come up multiple times. We tried to fix it, but we couldn't figure it out.
Cloud Architect at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
MSP
Jan 18, 2023
Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution.
I cannot recall coming across areas in need of improvement. We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI.
Storage Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Dec 27, 2021
You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me. Their technical support is excellent, but I can't get hold of engineers directly at Pure even when an engineer is assigned to me, which is a downside.
Cloud Architect at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
MSP
Nov 8, 2021
I've only been using it for about a year now, so I haven't run into any issues. The biggest thing for me is not so much the Array itself. It's their Pure1 manage solution, which is a centralized monitoring plane that we can register all of our arrays to and monitor from one location. However, the ability to make that more multi-tenant for customer visibility so that we, as a service provider, can monitor all arrays we give customers visibility down to their dedicated environments would be ideal. Seeing VM performance down to the array level, and things like that would be useful. It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking.
Implementation and Support Engineer at PRACSO S.R.L.
Real User
May 21, 2021
To be able to do the welcome files simultaneously on a lower version would be helpful. I general, we don't really have any pain points when dealing with the solution. The solution should improve its logon requirements. I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware.
Senior Administrator/IT Systems & Cloud Operations at Etisalat
Real User
Apr 6, 2021
The software layer has to improve. The software is promising but not prominent. We have upgraded more than 21 things. We have four artists and have had to upgrade the codes. There are several upgrades required, but we are slowly catching up to them. There are not many drill-down options available. EMC is providing many reporting tools that are not available in Pure. They need better reporting. Some of the tools are missing. EMC is a step ahead in that area. The usage at the host level has some limited options.
Chief Infrastructure & Security Office at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Real User
Oct 4, 2020
Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better.
In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems. They should have direct integration available using Pure APIs. Good candidates would be Rubrik and Veeam.
Senior Systems Administrator at a consultancy with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Sep 3, 2019
Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services. Pure is an innovator. They're a disruptor in the industry and I love that. That means that they're motivated and dedicated to being at the forefront of technology. So the only thing I can say is that I wish that Pure would keep up the good work and it looks like they are.
Manager of Infrastructure at a insurance company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Sep 3, 2019
They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit.
Director at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Sep 3, 2019
In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models. The scalability and telemetry analytics could be improved.
You can't use this solution with VNC, yet. We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC. I would like to see the cloud version of the application improved. It is kind of new and it still has some limitations. Using it with VNC would be nice, and making it more incorporated with vSphere would be very nice.
Head DBA and Technical Management at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Nov 21, 2018
One area that I haven't been sold on yet is the POD replication. We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency. We have another array that our latency isn’t affected by replication and when compared to the X array with a synchronous POD setup – it’s faster to respond to the system, but as soon as the POD mode is Async – the X is faster again. We not talking huge numbers – with the POD in synchronous mode with talking under 1ms for most IO operations.(Distance dependent to the other array) I do feel there is some gaps in my understanding of the POD setups in detail so perhaps its tuning gap.
With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks. Ideally, in a perfect world, you would have all-flash arrays being able to displace even your traditional "cheap and deep" type storage frames. We are more excited from the industry perspective when this type of transition can happen from a cost perspective. Also, I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center.
Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.
I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.
Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial. Storage replication should be essential, and the analytics should not incur extra charges. This is one of the main things organizations need.
Maybe the price can be reduced since the solution is very expensive.
After implementation, there are limitations, such as the number of paths, file systems, and replication options. It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises.
Managing data isn't difficult for me. The performance is usually perfect, but we sometimes have capacity problems.
I would like to see some AI features that would allow arrays to intelligently identify threats or unusual behavior in the data pattern and give an alert. It could be an additional feature and security that can come along with the array. Ultimately, whatever you store, you store it on a storage, and then that gets executed. Any AI-based protection against malware, unusual patterns of data, or some malicious code being stored on the array would make life easy for the administrators.
One point I'd like to improve is that the tool should start selling small boxes again. It discontinued some products and is focusing on bigger, more capable boxes, neglecting the SMB market. Even though it's not a big market, it shouldn't have removed them. One way to improve the product is to add an operational assistant that doesn't depend on VMware. It could also establish more alliances with other operational systems.
The tool's pricing is higher than competitors.
We are a little bit disappointed about the data deduplication feature. We were promised a deduplication rate of at least 2:1. At the moment, we get 1.8:1, which limits our expectations. We may run out of storage in the foreseeable future. We need better data deduplication. I read that the vendor is working on a better deduplication algorithm. It will be useful for us if it works. We mostly rely on long-term releases. We don't need the most up-to-date features, but we need a reliable environment. It's important for us.
There is room for improvement in catering to midrange storage needs, especially for customers seeking Enterprise-class features. We would appreciate a built-in transparent failover in the next release to eliminate the need for a separate metro cluster.
In terms of improvement, the dual-controller configuration is effective, but I'm eagerly anticipating the roadmap's promise of introducing multiple controllers, which could significantly boost scalability and resilience.
The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive.
Given its price, Pure is not the first option. If the customer only needs 500 terabytes and doesn't care how much data they'll put in the server, IBM is cheaper than Pure. Customers ask if there is Turkish language support, but Pure Storage doesn't have it. Only partners give support in Turkish, or customers need to speak in English. It would be good if Pure Storage could improve this.
We need to get more information about the performance fine-tuning that we are doing. Many options to check performance, like read, writes, random writes, and random reads, are missing in Pure FlashArray X NVMe. It will be much better if Pure FlashArray X NVMe provides these options like other products. The latency issue does come up multiple times. We tried to fix it, but we couldn't figure it out.
Our use cases require more multi-tenant capabilities and additional VLAN interfaces for separating different customers. We currently use it to provide storage, sometimes shared storage, to different customers, but it is less flexible in comparison to a dedicated solution.
We haven't come across any major issues. They could add more support for file storage and different types of storage.
I cannot recall coming across areas in need of improvement. We would like to see more visibility into garbage collection and CPU performance in the GUI.
You cannot tag a LUN with a description, and that should be improved. What I like on the Unity side is that when I expand LUNs or do things, there is an information field on the LUN. This is the Information field that you can tag on your LUNs to let yourself know, "Hey, I've added this much space on this date". Pure lacks that ability. So, you don't have a mechanism that's friendly for tracking your data expansions on the LUN and for adding any additional information. That's a downside for me. Their technical support is excellent, but I can't get hold of engineers directly at Pure even when an engineer is assigned to me, which is a downside.
Efficiency improvements would always be welcome, but I'm not sure if they could get more efficient.
I've only been using it for about a year now, so I haven't run into any issues. The biggest thing for me is not so much the Array itself. It's their Pure1 manage solution, which is a centralized monitoring plane that we can register all of our arrays to and monitor from one location. However, the ability to make that more multi-tenant for customer visibility so that we, as a service provider, can monitor all arrays we give customers visibility down to their dedicated environments would be ideal. Seeing VM performance down to the array level, and things like that would be useful. It's more multi-tenant functionality in their Pure1 manage portal that is lacking.
To be able to do the welcome files simultaneously on a lower version would be helpful. I general, we don't really have any pain points when dealing with the solution. The solution should improve its logon requirements. I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware.
The software layer has to improve. The software is promising but not prominent. We have upgraded more than 21 things. We have four artists and have had to upgrade the codes. There are several upgrades required, but we are slowly catching up to them. There are not many drill-down options available. EMC is providing many reporting tools that are not available in Pure. They need better reporting. Some of the tools are missing. EMC is a step ahead in that area. The usage at the host level has some limited options.
Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better.
In the future, I would like to see integration with enterprise backup systems. They should have direct integration available using Pure APIs. Good candidates would be Rubrik and Veeam.
In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified.
Every time I think of something that needs to improve, they're one step ahead, which I love. The only area I wish to see improve, I believe is coming, is in the FlashBlade product. Blade implementation fell short on a few of the services. Pure is an innovator. They're a disruptor in the industry and I love that. That means that they're motivated and dedicated to being at the forefront of technology. So the only thing I can say is that I wish that Pure would keep up the good work and it looks like they are.
They can tout the functionality and cutting edge technology that they have, but that's where the price tag comes in. The cost is high, but I think as they grow their business and get more customers that it will probably go down a little bit.
In the next release, I would like to see real-time analytics for further insight into consumption models. The scalability and telemetry analytics could be improved.
The UI for this solution needs to be improved.
I would like to see replication and DR features in the next release of this solution.
You can't use this solution with VNC, yet. We would like to see VNC integration or be able to use Pure Storage with VNC. I would like to see the cloud version of the application improved. It is kind of new and it still has some limitations. Using it with VNC would be nice, and making it more incorporated with vSphere would be very nice.
One area that I haven't been sold on yet is the POD replication. We've seen that when we create a POD in synchronous mode, it increases the latency. We have another array that our latency isn’t affected by replication and when compared to the X array with a synchronous POD setup – it’s faster to respond to the system, but as soon as the POD mode is Async – the X is faster again. We not talking huge numbers – with the POD in synchronous mode with talking under 1ms for most IO operations.(Distance dependent to the other array) I do feel there is some gaps in my understanding of the POD setups in detail so perhaps its tuning gap.
With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks. Ideally, in a perfect world, you would have all-flash arrays being able to displace even your traditional "cheap and deep" type storage frames. We are more excited from the industry perspective when this type of transition can happen from a cost perspective. Also, I want to see Pure Storage not only be for fast storage, but I want to see it be for the entire data center.